Church or Family First?

Thanks to Harvey Yoder this time for speaking to my pondering mind! Check out the Aug 21 issue of The Mennonite for his article. Of all the topics that keep regurgitating in me like a ruminant's cud since our return from overseas, this one has been most persistent. When we lived overseas, our life and work was in the Church and the Church was our life and our family. What made that kind of family most precious was not that we all got along all the time, and certainly not that we all came from the same backgrounds, but it was that we were committed to being a support to one another both in the physical and spiritual aspects of life. We were real and honest with one another and, in the areas that mattered the most, we held similar values.

Upon our return to North America, we struggled to know where to invest in relationships and time. Our main purpose was to re-connect with our earthly family (parents and siblings), but at the same time we felt a strong desire to stay connected to where we felt God was working. On top of the pressures of being "family" to our parents and siblings, we felt bombarded with advice on what we should be doing with our children, all the ways to "make memories" as a family, or what is necessary to enhance or secure our children's futures and that of our family. But my reaction to the "advice" was more of shock. Instead of feeling helped by that advice, I felt more and more alone. The "advice" I was getting was not settling in well with our values. I needed help, not so much with the work of raising a family, but help knowing how to live as a Christian family in this culture. What was more important than family to us then and now is living life and raising our children with other families who hold the values we believe lead us to live Christ-like examples and be His Body to the world.

In 1999, just as I was preparing to leave Cambodia for a family emergency in the US, I heard a sermon on God's call from the final verses of Luke 9 where Jesus reminds the disciples that our earthly families are secondary to God's call: "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." While I still took 2 weeks leave, those words weighed on my heart and mind! Family is important to us, but to us family is more than just us five and our relatives. Yoder writes, "In rearing our . . . children . . . I see few books and articles on marriage or family life even mentioning a larger context than that of the nuclear family unit . . . with the occasional visit by doting grandparents. The underlying notion is that parents do this by themselves . . . " After listing how we can, instead, make our church congregation our family, he writes, ". . . it takes a whole congregation to sustain a good marriage and to raise a whole and healthy family."

Upon our return in 2004, we chose to continue to make the Church an important part of our life. We made intentional decisions to stay close to the city and remain close to our home congregation. We chose to make our home congregation our family. We believed that God was calling us to continue our commitment to model unity and Christian community.

It is not always easy, especially in Lancaster County where most people in our congregation have relatives who live just around the corner. It is also not always easy to jump into a place of established friendships and support networks. Friendships take a lot of work, reciprocity and patience -- adjusting to the idiosyncrasies in one another. There is a forever-feeling period of vulnerability and it takes a lot of courage to overcome insecuries and feelings of failure or rejection. Just like there is no earthly family where everyone is exactly alike, we know that there is no church congregation where everyone will hold the exact same values and views. But choosing to be a family means commitment and intentionality.

I so much appreciated Yoder's clear message that family time should not always mean skipping a church service for a weekend get-away, but rather looking for times when our relaxation time or even vacation time can include our spiritual brothers, sisters, grandparents and cousins. The informal times together are just as nurturing to our children and own well-being as a Sunday School class or worship service.

I pray that Christ will continue to build His Church in unity and love. I want my children to grow up with a sense of security in life's storms that is modeled in a stable loving family. Our earthly family can give some of what they need, but what's great about God's family is that we can offer together a whole lot more -- I like to think of it as a bit of heaven on earth, by God's grace.